of all his attributes, and the motive of all his works. It is the beginning and the end of creation,
redemption, and sanctification—the link which unites us with the triune God, the cardinal virtue
of Christianity, the fulfilling of the law, the bond of perfectness, and the fountain of bliss.§ 46. Christianity in Individuals.
The transforming spiritual power of Christianity appears first in the lives of individuals. The
apostles and primitive Christians rose to a morality and piety far above that of the heroes of heathen
virtue and even that of the Jewish saints. Their daily walk was a living union with Christ, ever
seeking the glory of God and the salvation of men. Many of the cardinal virtues, humility, for
example, and love for enemies, were unknown before the Christian day.
Peter, Paul, and John represent the various leading forms or types of Christian piety, as well
as of theology. They were not without defect, indeed they themselves acknowledged only one
sinless being, their Lord and Master, and they confessed their own shortcomings;^627 yet they were
as nearly perfect as it is possible to be in a sinful world; and the moral influence of their lives and
writings on all generations of the church is absolutely immeasurable. Each exhibits the spirit and
life of Christ in a peculiar way. For the gospel does not destroy, but redeems and sanctifies the
natural talents and tempers of men. It consecrates the fire of a Peter, the energy of a Paul, and the
pensiveness of a John to the same service of God. It most strikingly displays its new creating power
in the sudden conversion of the apostle of the Gentiles from a most dangerous foe to a most efficient
friend of the church. Upon Paul the Spirit of God came as an overwhelming storm; upon John, as
a gentle, refreshing breeze. But in all dwelt the same new, supernatural, divine principle of life. All
are living apologies for Christianity, whose force no truth-loving heart can resist.
Notice, too, the moral effects of the gospel in the female characters of the New Testament.
Christianity raises woman from the slavish position which she held both in Judaism and in
heathendom, to her true moral dignity and importance; makes her an heir of the same salvation
with man,^628 and opens to her a field for the noblest and loveliest virtues, without thrusting her,
after the manner of modern pseudo-philanthropic schemes of emancipation, out of her appropriate
sphere of private, domestic life, and thus stripping her of her fairest ornament and peculiar charm.
The Virgin Mary marks the turning point in the history of the female sex. As the mother of
Christ, the second Adam, she corresponds to Eve, and is, in a spiritual sense, the mother of all
living.^629 In her, the "blessed among women," the whole sex wass blessed, and the curse removed
which had hung over the era of the fall. She was not, indeed, free from actual and native sin, as is
now, taught, without the slightest ground in Scripture, by the Roman church since the 8th of
December, 1854. On the contrary, as a daughter of Adam, she needed, like all men, redemption
and sanctification through Christ, the sole author of sinless holiness, and she herself expressly calls
God her Saviour.^630 But in the mother and educator of the Saviour of the world we no doubt may
and should revere, though not worship, the model of female Christian virtue, of purity, tenderness,(^627) Comp. Phil. 3:12-14; 2 Cor. 4:7 sqq.; 12:7; 1 Cor. 9:27; Jas. 3:9; 1 John 1:8, 9; Gal. 2:11; Acts 15:36-39; 23:3 sqq.
(^628) 1 Pet. 3:7; Gal 3:28.
(^629) Gen. 3:20. This parallel was first drawn by Irenaeus, but overdrawn and abused by later fathers in the service of Mariolatry.
(^630) Luke 1:47ἐπι τῶ θεῷ τῷ σωτῆρί μου.
A.D. 1-100.